Metaphors of War, Ontology, and Journeys in the Inaugural Speeches of Good luck Jonathan and Bola Ahmed Tinubu

Abstract

This study examines the metaphors of war, ontology, and journeys in the inaugural speeches of Goodluck Jonathan and Bola Ahmed Tinubu, former presidents of Nigeria. The study is necessitated by the need to establish the fact that Nigerian presidents use metaphors to communicate their political views, ideologies and goals to the public in a relatable way. The main data of qualitative research are the two inaugural addresses of former Nigerian presidents, Goodluck Jonathan and Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Drawing upon Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA), the research explores how these political leaders employed metaphors to construct narratives of governance, identity, and national destiny. The result, therefore, reveals that there are ontological, war, journey metaphors. From the identified conceptual metaphor, 21 metaphorical themes were discerned. Juxtaposing the two presidents’ density of metaphorical usage, Jonathan and Tinubu focused on ontological metaphor as they assert political issues to an ‘entity’ and ‘machine’ that should be handled physically. Moreover, Tinubu and Jonathan used journey metaphor as they wanted to paint a picture portraying the political process as a confluence of movement towards a goal. Again, they used war metaphor as they were interested in fighting and tackling corruption. The study contribute to our understanding of metaphorical discourse in political communication and its implications for shaping public perceptions and policies in diverse cultural and political settings. Based on this, this study recommends that political leaders use metaphors to simplify complex political view, influence political participation and in the long run achieve their social goals.